The Criminal Justice System and Health Care

Charles A. Erin and Suzanne Ost

Description

This book examines questions of medical accountability and ethics. It analyses how the criminal justice system regulates health care practice, and to what extent it can and should be used as a tool to resolve ethical conflict in health care.

For most of the twentieth century, criminal courts were engaged in matters relating to medicine principally as a forum to resolve ethical controversies over the sanctity of life. However, the judiciary approached this function with reluctance and a marked tendency to defer to the medical profession to define what constituted ethical, and thus lawful conduct. However, over the past 25 years, criminal courts have increasingly been drawn into these types of question, and the criminal law has become a major actor in the
resolution of ethical conflict.

The trend to prosecute for aberrant professional conduct or medical malpractice and the role of the criminal process in medicine has been analytically neglected in the UK. There is scant literature addressing the appropriate boundaries of the criminal process in resolving ethical conflict, the theoretical legal analysis of the law's relationship with health care, or the practical impact of the criminal justice system on professionals and the delivery of health care in the UK. This volume addresses these issues via a combination of theoretical analyses and key case studies, drawing on the experiences of other carefully selected jurisdictions. It places a particular emphasis on the appropriateness of the involvement of the criminal justice system in
health care, the limitations of this developing trend, and solutions to the problems that arise from it.

The Criminal Justice System and Health Care

Charles A. Erin and Suzanne Ost

Table of Contents

Foreword by Graeme CattoIntroduction by Charles A. Erin & Suzanne Ost1. Criminalizing MEdical Malpractice by Margaret Brazier & Neil Allen2. Medical Manslaughter: The Rise (and Replacement) of a Contest Crime by Oliver Quick3. Medical or Managerial Manslaughter by Neil Allen4. When are Errors a Crime? - Lessons from New Zealand by Alan Forbes Merry5. Euthanasia and the Defense of Necessity: Adovcating a More Appropriate Legal Response by Suzanne Ort 6. Criminal Law is the Problem, not the Solution by John Griffiths7. Lessons in Legal and Judicial Ethics from Schiavo: The Special Responsibilites of Lawyers and Judges in Cases Involving Persons with Severe Cognitive
Disabilities by Robert Destro8. Assisted Dying Legislation: Ethical Dilemmas for Doctors by Michael Wilks9. Terminating Life and Human Rights: The Fetus and the Neonate by Elizabeth Wicks10. Dignity: The Difference between Abortion and Neonaticide for the Severely Disabled by IStephen Smith11. Omission of Medical Treatment for Severely Disabled Newborns and Criminal Liability Under Spanish Law Sergio Romeo-Malanda12. Should We Criminalize HIV Transmission? by Rebecca Bennett13. The Rightful Domain of the Criminal Law by Charles A. Erin14. Medicalizing Crime? Criminalizing Health? by Jonathan Montgomery